Rocket Power: Beach Bandits

"A game that definetly could've been better, ony to be bought by Rocket Power fans"

Today I'll be looking at an RPG-style game released in late 2002. This game is based on the popular TV cartoon rocket power on nickelodeon, about 2 siblings (Otto and Reggie), and their friends, Maurice “Twister” Rodriguez and Sam AKA “the squid.” Otto and Reggie live with Raymundo, their dad, and Tito, a Hawaiian friend of raymundo. Together, Otto, Reggie, twister, and Sam skate, surf, play hockey, and do many other crazy and wild sports on ocean shores, California. Now.... onto the review!

Game play: 7/10
Basically, you get skateboards, skates, and sometimes even a hover board to move around the city and do what you have to do. It's and RPG-style game, and it tells you where to go next, so that's not bad. You can also walk around,(although since walking is slower than skating why would you, anyways?), beat robots with a hockey stick, and collect “gold coins” which unlock hidden characters in multi-player mode. There is also a tutorial for all of you video-gamers out there that hate to read the instruction booklet. So why does it get and 7 instead of a 9 or 10? Many reasons. For example, as I mentioned before, you can beat robots with a hockey stick. There are different kinds of pucks, which will do different actions. But trust me, after a while it gets kind of boring swinging your hockey stick at every single thing you see. Another reason is that there's a “cheats” section, in which if you answer questions correctly about the TV show, It will unlock a sort of level warp, meaning you can go into levels that you aren't even up to and play them. Now when I first saw this section I thought the questions were going to be as hard as hell, and since I wasn't a Rocket Power super fan, I didn't even think I was going to pass the first question. But the questions were so easy! All they did was ask for character names and stuff like that, which I answered all correctly. And even if you didn't get the questions right, u could go back again and try until you had it right! So the reason this game's game play gets a 7 is because of stupid battling and way to easy to cheat.

Story: 8/10
The story is that the rocket power kids are out of school. They're thinking on how to spend their summer vacation when it is all ruined by a dreadful announcement. A town official announces that all the sand in Ocean Shores is gone, thus postponing the Ocean Shores Surf Classic. This is all a shock to everyone, in particular the rocket power kids, whose summer seems ruined. But then the town official introduces a mysterious man, Eric Golem who has donated a large sum of money to solve the sand problem. Everybody is happy with Eric Golem, except the rocket kids. They think something's fishy with Eric Golem, and when they see a robot with his logo in it up to no good, their suspicions grow even more. Who is Eric Golem, How did the sand disappear And what's Golem's connection with all of this anyways? Can you solve the mystery?

Graphics/Sound: 4/10
Horrible. Period. First let's talk about the graphics. Oh god the graphics. First of al, they don't even blink. When they talk or even get a shot of the kids or other people in the game they look like robots. And don't even get me started on their square bodies. Square bodies! Ok now let's talk about the sound. The music you hear probably wants to make you snooze, and the only good song is probably the last song (those morons at the video-making company make you wait until the last stage to give you good music...morons).

Playtime/Replayability: 5/10
Why? Because it takes less than a week to finish if you get the hang of it quickly. And also because I don't think you'll be spending more than 15 hours on this game. Trust me it's going to be harder to continue than to stop, and in video games that's a bad thing. And the replayability stinks too! The only reason you would want to replay it or just go back to some stages is because while you're playing you collect “gold coins” if you collect all the gold coins, you will unlock all of the hidden characters in multi-player mode. And not even for that I would replay it.

Final Score: 6/10
Here's the bottom line. Think before you buy this game. Rent it if you're a rocket power fan. Otherwise don't even bother. This game could've been better. It definitely could've.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/04/04